Patch 4.3 Nerfs Darkmoon Faire Reputation Grind

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If you’re going for Insane in the Membrane, you can stop making Darkmoon decks right now. As of Patch 4.3, Darkmoon Faire Exalted reputation will be achievable solely through participating in new activities on Darkmoon Island.

There wasn’t all that much to do at the old Darkmoon Faire, and people rarely stuck around for very long and even more rarely went back for seconds. The new Darkmoon Island captures the carnival experience very well, all the way down to the obviously slightly rigged games, and it’s likely that many people will go every month.

I won’t cover the new Faire in depth here except as it pertains to achieving Insane in the Membrane, since you can read all about it elsewhere or see it for yourself on the PTR. It’s quite a large area, so be prepared to be slightly disoriented or even lost for a short while. Aside from that I am only going to cover the ways to gain reputation, which are the new quests.

Every player will have access to five daily quests and seven quests repeatable once each month. All of these quests grant 250 reputation and are not capped; they can all be repeated all the way through Exalted. This means the maximum reputation you can gain each time the Faire is open is 11,750, before bonuses, and if you start at Neutral you will hit Exalted in the fourth month. The total cost will be less than 50 gold in Darkmoon Game Tokens, and you’ll make much more than that from the quest rewards.

In addition to the quests at the Faire itself, you can obtain nine rare artifacts which drop from mobs in dungeons and raids (three of the nine drop only from players in battlegrounds). Turning in one of these artifacts grants 250 reputation and is repeatable, but the drop rate for these will be quite low so I wont cover them in detail here; as “world drops” they won’t really be farmable. Keep your Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide with you all the time, though, since you may find one of these items when the Faire is closed and have to wait until the following month to turn it in. All of these items can also be purchased on the Auction House, so expect to see them there shortly after the patch drops at ridiculous prices.

Each quest grants level-appropriate experience and gold rewards. The five daily quests are associated with each of five carnival attractions and may require you to whack a bunch of gnolls or launch yourself from the venerable cannon into the bulls-eye. In addition, six of the monthly quests you will be able to do are associated with specific professions and will grant 5 skill points in that profession. Therefore it’s to your benefit to learn every profession, even if it’s at level 1, so as to have access to all of the quests.

The quests look like this:

Test Your Strength — Kill 250 monsters which would grant experience. This counts if the mob grants even 1 XP, so fast spawning level 78-80 mobs in Northrend would make a fast grind for level 85 players. Remember to pick up your Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide and keep it in your bags. While I haven’t yet tested it, reports from the PTR currently indicate that honorable kills of players also count, so hitting the battlegrounds will make this one go down fast.

The Humanoid Cannonball — The cannon shoots you from one end of the Faire into the ocean at the other end. An NPC on the beach will teleport you back to the cannon for 30 silver.He Shoots, He Scores! — The classic carnival shooting gallery. You can take as many attempts as you need to complete the daily.Target: Turtle — It’s a slow moving turtle, and there’s some leeway in tossing the ring at it, but when the turtle wants to move it can move pretty fast for a short time. This was the only attraction I could complete in one attempt.Tonk Commander — The targets are not the little houses, but even smaller round targets on the ground. Watch out for Enemy Tonks which will try to blast you.It’s Hammer Time — You’ll come back to this again and again even without the daily. Whack the Hoggers for three points but avoid whacking the babies or you will be stunned and lose time.

Note that you can do the dailies eight times each Faire; the “extra” daily comes from early Sunday morning between midnight and 3 am when dailies reset. Of course this means staying up late Saturday night.

And of course you can continue to turn in decks, but if gaining the reputation remains this easy, why bother?

Dare I say it, with the new Darkmoon Faire, at least one reputation grind for Insane in the Membrane will actually be fun. I’m torn because while I really like the new Faire, I don’t like how easy Insane in the Membrane is becoming. I’ve been following the PTR closely and my best guess for this patch going live is November 29; you can get started the following week with December’s Faire.

Lest I leave you on an optimistic note, let me say that this is wholly based on the Public Test Realm and that Blizzard may decide to make last-minute changes before this content goes live. Stay tuned; when this patch does go live I will be testing everything again to determine if any such changes get made.